After a two and a half year investigation into the stabbing death of Vanessa Pham in Falls Church, Virginia, police were coming up empty-handed in their quest to find the killer and bring closure for family and friends.

The 19-year-old college freshman was found dead in the driver's seat of her crashed car on June 27, 2010, slumped over the center console and covered in blood from 13 stab wounds.

Despite finding the murder weapon with fingerprints under the driver's seat, the DNA evidence didn't match anyone in the police database.

A break in the case came in April 2012 when Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia was arrested for stealing three bottles of Moet & Chandon champagne from a McLean, Virginia grocery store.

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Caught: Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia, left, will now face trial in the 2010 stabbing death of Vanessa Pham, right, after an April 2012 arrest for stealing champagne provided police with matching fingerprints on the murder weapon

It wasn't until last December that investigators matched Blanco Garcia's prints to the DNA found on the murder weapon and arrested the man.

Now, Blanco Garcia will stand trial for Pham's murder.

Initially, Blanco Garcia's lawyers tried to get the case dismissed, claiming that the media's coverage of the investigation tainted their client's ability to receive a fair trial since nearly all of the evidence in the case was released before a jury was selected.

Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Marum Roush dismissed that claim Thursday, saying all of the evidence reported in The Washington Post would come out in trial and that jury members could set aside what they learned in the press.

Taken: Pham was home for the summer, looking forward to a new babysitting job and a visit from her boyfriend when she was stabbed to death while giving Blanco Garcia a ride

Pham had just returned home for the summer after her first year studying fashion design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

She was living with her mother at their apartment in Falls Church, and had just landed a babysitting gig for the summer the same day she was killed.

Pham was also looking forward to a visit from her boyfriend Aaron Apsley who lived in Ohio.

Around 2:45 p.m. she decided to go to the Fairfax Plaza Shopping Center to get her eyebrows done at JD Nail Salon.

It was while leaving the salon that she first encountered Blanco Garcia, standing outside holding his 1-year-old daughter.

Garcia started his day by going into Washington, D.C. with his daughter to buy $400 dollars of PCP.

When he got home he smoked three cigarettes dipped in liquid PCP before going to the mall with his daughter.

According
to court documents, by the time he approached Pham outside the mall, he
was having a 'severe PCP intoxication' and asked the young woman to
take him and his daughter to the hospital.

Taken for a ride: Pham agreed to take Blanco Garcia and his one-year-old daughter to the hospital, but was found less than a mile away stabbed to death in her crashed car

According to an account given to police by Blanco Garcia, Pham accidentally took a wrong turn and he overreacted.

'Vanessa did nothing wrong,' a detective paraphrased Blanco Garcia in a report made after his arrest.

At
this point, Blanco Garcia was hallucinating and believed that Pham was
going to harm his daughter or call the police, so he acted.

He
took out a butcher's knife from his backpack and stabbed the girl 13
times which caused her to lose control of the vehicle and crash into a
ravine on the side of the road.

Blanco Garcia ditched the knife and left Pham to die, fleeing from the vehicle with his daughter through the sunroof.

A
driver spotted the car at 3:34pm, less than half a mile from the mall
and called police. When police arrived, they found Pham belted into her
seat and covered in blood with one wheel of the car still spinning.

But police were stumped when it came to finding the suspect.

Severely intoxicated: Blanco Garcia has spent his day traveling into Washington D.C. to buy $400 dollars of PCP with his daughter, and had smoked three cigarettes dipped in the drugs before going to the shopping center

Even though the knife was left in the car, the DNA evidence produced no matches in the police database.

Investigators were certain the killer was a stranger since they had no reason to believe Pham had any enemies or was in any trouble.

They canvassed the area around the mall and collected DNA from Pham's friends and family, local sex offenders and homeless people around the mall, but again, no matches.

Pham's story was even highlighted on TV show 'America's Most Wanted' to no avail.